I have been dreadfully remiss about updating this blog! The main reason is that I don’t tend to update this blog when I haven’t done any drawing or planning what I am going to draw or write next. 2013 has been a very strange year, to say the least… hopelessly unproductive in some ways and a very long holiday in the far East also meant that my work was entirely put on the backburner and almost forgotten.

I had intended to work on two short stories for Cabaret Voltaire issue two – “Signal Failure” was one that had been rattling about in my brain for a while, but somehow the words wouldn’t come and I didn’t want to force them. I had storyboarded the entire sorry tale but only in my mind, and fleshing out the actual frames took more work than I could muster in the enervating tropical heat. I honestly don’t know how anyone does any useful work in that kind of weather. All I wanted to do was to move as little as possible and I suspect even my brain plodded along more sluggishly than usual. At the time, it was only capable of pondering on food and trivial amusements.

Anyway I am back in familiar environs and ready to get on with some work this autumn and winter, and my next new story will be word-less like “The Snack Bar”, except this time it will be about a street performer who dances with a dummy and lives a solitary existence. The preliminary title is “The Street Dancer’s Romance” and I have already pencilled a few pages on A3 Bristol board. It will be a tricky story to pull off right, however, and I’m still wondering whether it will be successful. I am doing it in the woodcut style, one picture per page — recently influenced by my favourite woodcut artist, Otto Nuckel, and a recent book I had bought by Lynd Ward called “Vertigo”, which was far more complex in style and plot than any other woodcut novel I’d seen so far. I wasn’t sure it was a complete success as far as elucidating the plot went, but the stark black-and-white compositions were gorgeous masterpieces. I cannot say my ink drawings will be anything like those woodcuts, but at least I can make an attempt to tell a story in my own way. I won’t give an estimated time for completion as this will depend on so many other things going on, but I do hope to get this story completed by the end of the year. And sent to the publishers. Cabaret Voltaire issue two is likely to contain only this one story instead of two as originally planned.